We're HOOOME!

It feels so good to be back (despite the jetlag) and at a different time of year. Autumn has always been my favorite season and now I get to catch the tail end of it. Wish there were still some leaves on the trees but at least you can smell them in the air. The air is so clean here, it's funny because I just read an article about northeast Edmonton having really bad air quality but to me, it's pristine. I love walking outside and just taking deep breaths, hopefully cleaning out my lungs a bit.

This break feels special because I know in September, that's it. I am so looking forward to that time. It's so exciting to think about. I can start preparing a bit now and it just feels really great to be doing that kind of thing.

yay....

It's been so nice to be here training without having a 'class' like I usually do. There's still about half of us here but we've been doing lots of solitary training, which I love. I think doing forms as a group really did help me to get faster but at this point, I think they do more harm than good. We've all developed bad habits (sloppy movements) that need to be corrected and I'm just starting to really make the forms my own and fully express their flavours. I'll never move the way shifu does so trying to copy him exactly is an exercise in frustration. I need to just find my style and make it great. So anyway, that's mostly what I've been working on. I'm also getting ready to leave here (eeeee, one week) and so I'm organizing and tying up loose ends.

About 2 weeks ago I started painting lessons. My teacher is this tiny old Chinese man who is very talented and also very sweet. I've really been enjoying it, it's challenging but not too hard and the time just flies by when I'm there. So far I've painted a pine tree, some bamboo, and another scene with mountains and another tree. Good times.

Sometimes I come up with really good, insightful ideas but then I sit down to blog about it and realize I have no idea where to start. It makes sense in my head but I can't get it out right. What I wanted to write about was the concept of mastery.....I'll give it a shot, apologies if it ends up in a bunch of rambling.

The idea of a kung fu master that most people have (and I used to have) is so different from the reality. It's so much fantasy about mysterious, otherworldly people who've achieved super-natural powers or who are hard-core traditionalists passing down this pristine lineage of an art that hasn't changed in hundreds of years. The more educated you become on martial arts and the more teachers you meet, the more you get to know one, the more you realize how ridiculous this all is. Kung fu is a hodge-podge that people have been mixing around for literally thousands of years. Teachers/masters are people, just like anyone, with flaws and personality quirks, who have stuck with it. They are not always the most talented, the kindest, or the smartest. I often feel frustrated with Shifu, he leaves me floundering a lot of the time and I wish he'd spend more time teaching us and less time irritating us but the closer we get to the end of the program the clearer it is to me that having to figure things out for myself has been one of the most valuable things I've done here. If he was spoon-feeding me everything, I'd be totally lost upon returning home and realizing that I was on my own. Now I feel confident that I can figure most things out myself (maybe with occasional help) and become a master myself.

The grand-master (my teachers teacher) tells people that he was not a stand out student, many of his kung fu brothers were much better than him but they all left and he kept training and now he's the grand-master of Wudang. Every time I see him, I'm struck by what an amazing martial artist he is, and it's all because he never quit. When I'm feeling very unhappy about our training and contemplating why I'm still here, it comes down to one thing: I'm not a quitter. It can seem like a personality flaw at times, I wonder if I'm more stubborn than smart and if I'm not 'flogging a dead horse' but flaw or not, that's the way I am and really the only difference between me and some of the people who I've trained with in the past. I don't know if this is just the way I am or if it developed over all the years of training. I am not the fastest, the strongest, or even the cleverest, but I am still here and I hope I can end up like our grand-master in the end, being able to look back and be so glad that I stuck it out.

So I guess what I want to say is this, instead of glorifying those who have achieved mastery (in kung fu or in other pursuits), get your head out of the clouds and take a look at what it really took to get them where they are.

per·se·ver·ance

ˌpərsəˈvi(ə)rəns/

noun

1. 1.

   steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

I haven't blogged in 2 weeks and it's been a pretty weird 2 weeks. We went to Beijing for that performance which was also a competition of sorts apparently, sort of like China's Got Talent, and we won...unfortunately. Which means we have another round and then if we win that too, we appear on the Chinese New Year special. It's a huge deal actually, 800 million people watch that show, I just can't get excited. As a result of all this, we've all had to re-organize our Christmas breaks (some people are going to miss Christmas at home) 2 times already. It's incredibly awkward because it's obviously really important to Shifu but most of us would really rather not deal with the hassle. We've all been quite respectful but there have been a few uncomfortable conversations and he pointedly reminded us that we signed a contract for this program where we agreed to do performances and interviews. So after all this mess, I finally have a clear idea of what to write here: I'm coming home at the end of October and leaving just after Christmas! I'm sure it's obvious but I can't wait to get out of here, this has all been pretty stressful and I can't wait to see my family and friends again. Yay!

Only one month to go now...

Reading last weeks post makes me cringe a little but it was true for me at the time and I'll probably feel that way again in the next year. This week shifu taught us a new qi gong called the Crane Standing Qigong and it's amazing what a difference that has made for my state of mind. Learning something new is cool, learning this in particular is awesome. It's pretty difficult actually and requires tons of focus but is very calming, just what I need right now. I know I will be practicing this every chance I get for the next little while. It's definitely something that if I was to practice it alone in a park at home, people would think I was a little crazy, but one of the great things about China is that people do all sorts of weird things in public and they're completely unselfconscious about it too. There are many things I don't like about living here, but that is one of the pluses, people really don't care too much about looking foolish. It can be quite refreshing.

It's been raining off and on this week which is great because we got to sleep in for 2 days (YES!) and also because it's really cooled off. I started sleeping with a sheet covering me instead of just a thin sarong and I no longer wake up at night all sweaty.

We've been roped into doing another of those performances that I love so much (she said with heavy sarcasm) so I'll probably be heading off to Beijing for a few days in about 2 weeks. In the meantime, we'll be wasting (ahem, I mean spending...yeah...) our time on preparations for said performance. Half the class just got back from a big performance on Thursday too. This year has seemed like a big time waster in a lot of ways so I've been trying to focus on what I need to work on as much as I can when I get some time. I also try to spend my time outside of class on fruitful things like studying chinese, learning about the history and theory of martial arts and daoism, and not going crazy! Staying positive is the biggest challenge right now, I perform these mental gymnastics to force myself to see some benefit to what we're doing, but it's impossible to maintain that mindset in the midst of the relentless disappointment that we're all facing right now.

Looking back on my blog posts from this year you can really see the ups and downs. I think to some extent that is natural in a situation like this....but that doesn't comfort me anymore. I've become an expert at latching on to some little thing to keep me going through the hard times but I think I've pretty much realized that any optimism is only a temporary pick-me-up until the next disappointment comes along. The best way to deal that I've come up with is to stop caring at all, but it's not natural for me to be apathetic, I have to force myself to feel that way in order to just get through it.

This post is a downer I'm sure but some posts you write for others and some are for yourself, this one is for me. I feel like all the things that are important to me, in training and even in life, are fundamentally different from what is important to shifu. This means that what our training focuses on is rarely what I feel I need anymore and shifu is really not interested in hearing what I think or in changing anything.

We only have 1 more year left, I constantly question whether it is worth hanging on or should I just cut my losses and leave? I know I have a tendency in life to keep going for far longer on a certain path than I should, is this one of those times? I don't know.....

I've never been so open about these feelings before. We all question why we're here when times are tough but tough times are starting to run together to the point where I wonder if there are any good times left.

We learned the fan form this week (Heaven and Earth Fan) while the rest of our class was in Beijing doing some T.V. appearance. It was a nice week, nice to learn something new and also to have a break from being part of the "class" which can be pretty trying at times. The training format was a lot more relaxed and doing fan is actually really fun. I have to admit I wasn't super excited about learning this form, it's not part of our curriculum and it's from another mountain in northern China, Gansu province. It's also a form that tons of Chinese women learn because it's pretty and feminine (at least in their minds) and so it seems a bit silly to me at times. After learning it though, I can see the appeal, it's fun, not too hard, and there's something satisfying about the sound the fan makes when you open it. I'm not under any illusions as to its applicability "on the streets" but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. 

It's started to cool off slightly at night now so the early (6 am) class is actually comfortable for practicing. Hallelujah! The end is near....

Still hot...still melting...

I had a good stretching day this week where Mel pushed me down in the splits, personal best. The benefit to melting....you get softer, like an ice cream...mmmm...ice cream....

Today I found 50 yuan in my pocket. Awesome.

Went swimming yesterday afternoon in the local stream, what a relief! I think I'll go again today.

Next week I learn the fan form while Shifu's away with a few classmates for a performance, I should have more interesting updates then.

It is HOT HOT HOT!!!!

This is the hottest summer here in years (and that's saying something, b/c they're all hot) and although it sucks, I'm handling it pretty well I think. I'm quite proud of myself for the serenity with which I've handled this whole thing, I've had a few grouchy days but overall, much improved. I always warn people not to mess with me in a Wudang summer, I know it's not a good time for me and I just try to get through is as quickly as possible but this year has been better. I'm not sure if it has to do with some things I've been reading, meditation, or just some shift in perspective, but I'm glad.

I just hope I haven't jinxed it by writing this, knock on wood!

  "Jettison everything else, then, and lay hold of these things only, few as they are; and remember withal that it is only this present, a moment of time, that a man lives: all the rest either has been lived or may never be. Little indeed, then, is a man's life, and little the nook of earth whereon he lives, and little even the longest fame, and that too handed on through a succession of manikins, each one of them very soon to be dead, with no knowledge even of themselves, let alone a man who has died long since."
                                                                                                              -Marcus Aurelius

This last week was awesome! A few of the guys in our class were preparing for some performance and so the rest of us were just left to our own devices for the most part. It was great. I reviewed a lot of my forms, worked on correcting some movements that I was doing wrong, and stretched a lot. I always say that stretching is the only good thing about summer here (although showering is also pretty great) but I was getting frustrated that we weren't getting enough time to work on it. Now I feel better. I also had a chat with Shifu where he reassured me that we won't run out of time to learn the rest of the stuff before the program ends. I worry sometimes but he said we still have lots of time. It's a relief.

Wow, I haven't written in such a long time! I missed a week and then went on an unexpected vacation but I got back on Saturday night.

My boyfriend Simon had some friends visiting China and he went to meet up with them for a week. He invited me to go along and Shifu said ok but at first I declined, thinking I'd already gone on a trip this year and didn't want to spend too much, but then I found out that his family had a timeshare they could use on an island in the south China sea (Hainan) so the accommodations would be free. How could I say no? The summer here is always so miserable and plus my birthday was coming up so I went along with them and had an awesome time. The hotel we stayed at was outside the city so there were lots of stars at night and it had amazing gardens and swimming pools. I went swimming at least twice every day, usually 3 times. It was wonderful. There was also a beach nearby that we could catch a taxi to so we went to the beach a few times too. Hainan is a very laid back place (for China that is) and although there's not a ton of stuff to see/do it was so nice to just relax. A great birthday present for me. Thanks to everyone who had a hand in it.

I also got some really nice gifts and birthday wishes on my actual birthday. I knew there was a reason I was still on facebook! haha. Thanks everyone!

The view from our window

The main pool

One of the other pools, there were so many!

drinking a coconut with Simon's friend James

Simon kickin' it at the beach bar

The beach in Sanya.

Training has been less that pleasant but I don't want to dwell on it, I'll use the memory of my trip and the knowledge that summer is finite to get me through it.

Wow, it's gotten very hot! This week we definitely started SUMMER in Wudang. It's been super hot and humid and miserable. I always hate summer here and all I can say is that I really hope this one passes quickly.

On another note, I'm reading a history of Chinese martial arts and it starts waaay back with the Shang dynasty (1600 BC -1046 BC) and there are some interesting things in there. One of the cool things I read about was the martial dances that became popular in the following Zhou dynasty either to get everyone pumped up for a coming battle or in court to relive past successes. From what I've read these martial dances consisted of weapons forms and martial choreography to music. I never knew that the pairing of martial arts with music had such a long history. Makes me think differently about performances done to music. Here in Wudang we use the same 6 songs for every performance and all the other schools use those songs too, it's so boring! If I wasn't so bored of these performances in general, I'd try to get a few new songs added in there to spice things up a little but they all seem perfectly happy to just continue on doing things the same over and over again. China's weird like that.

What to write???

I'm feeling a little better this week, though still very tired. I want to thank those of you that left comments, they really helped comfort me when I needed it. I still wouldn't say I'm 100% but reading what you guys wrote cheers me up quite a bit. I'm so lucky to have wonderful, supportive family and friends in my life, it's easy to forget that when I'm so far away but you guys made the distance seem much less significant. Thanks!!

This ended up being a really challenging and yet revealing week. We all go through tough periods here where we question why we're still here, what are we really learning, is it worth all the suffering and this was just one of those times for me. These feelings can be hard to express but I'm going to try anyway:

4 years ago when I came here for the program, I had all sorts of expectations, dreams, and fantasies about what it would be like. I think this is natural. Over the course of my time here, these have all been taken away layer after layer to reveal a clearer and clearer view of the reality of the situation. Even though this process has been very painful and I resisted as hard as I could, I really value it now. I will never again be so innocent and trusting as I was then and though it seems people always mourn the loss of these qualities, I would rather have my eyes wide open and see the truth.

That being said, sometimes it's really difficult to keep going when you can see so much. This week in particular I was feeling so down thinking about how little I've really learned, how far I have yet to go to reach most of my goals, how much time has been wasted, and all that I've missed out on while living here. It sometimes seems like when I get like this is when classes become harder, maybe that's just my perception of things or maybe it's some weird coincidence. It's also so shitty that there's no-one to talk to that's not embroiled in the same process. I miss my family and friends so much at times like these and that just tends to make me feel worse. So now not only am I unhappy, I'm homesick too.

I don't regret coming here and I don't think I would be any better off to be somewhere else (in the long run anyway). I'm reminded of a book I read called The Passionate Journey about a Japanese woman's search for satori (awakening or enlightenment). In the book she remember the time she spent with one of her first teachers and his wife. At the time she felt like she wasn't learning anything, that her teacher ignored her, and that his wife actually hated her. Decades later though, looking back she is so grateful to them for everything they taught her that it brings tears to her eyes.  I really hope that my situation is similar and that I can look back and laugh about how I thought I wasn't learning anything useful. I try to remember that story in times like these.

I haven't written in a while and it's always hard to decide what to say after you've let blogging slide for a while.

8 of us went on a trip to Xian and Xiahe. Xian is a city I've been to several times but it's my favorite big city in China. It used to be the capital long before Beijing and it's just loaded with history. The terracotta warriors are here as well as intact city walls, ancient pagodas, a bell and a drum tower and some epic museums. This was my first time to the provincial museum there and it was amazing, I could have spent the entire day there. We ate a lot, the best thing I had was this pesto chicken sandwich:

We took a train and a bus from Xian to Xiahe which is a small town on the western border of Gansu province. We went there because there is a HUGE Tibetan Buddhist monastery there (second only to the one in Lhasa, Tibet) and tons of ethnically Tibetan people coming from all over western China. It's quite a pain to get a permit to go to Tibet so we figured this would be a cool way to get a taste of the culture and 'get away from it all' without the hassle, plus we only had 1 week. The monastery was like a town in and of itself with thousands of Buddhist monks, so much to see, I could have stayed much longer.

 We were at around 9000 feet so the air was pretty thin and it was cold too. The food was interesting, lots of yak. Yak meat, yak butter, yak yogurt, etc. It was tasty though, especially the yogurt. We went to some grasslands nearby with beautiful scenery, nomadic herders, what I think was an eagle, a sky burial site, and of course lots of yaks! It was great, my favorite part of the trip by far.

We stopped in Xian again on the way home for 2 days and mostly just ate and rested. Then we came back for 2 nights, I trained and did my laundry and some of us were off again to Wuhan for a T.V. performance. I don't have much to say about it, the usual waste of time that I won't bore you with but needless to say that we were exhausted when we got back. A few days later and I'm still recovering.

So a very busy few weeks. Very busy indeed.

Oh and today I got chin to toe on both legs!!!!! Yay!!!! 4 years of hard work has finally paid off. Yesterday Mel helped me into my lowest split ever too. And I finished the Chinese workbook I've been using and can move on to the next one now. Whew! Busy.......

I am currently reading this book by Yasuo Yuasa and it is AMAZING!!!!

I am only about half done but I was so excited about the book that I just had to post about it now. Every single person who is interested in martial arts, eastern philosophy, or meditation and who has both a mind and a body of their own should READ  THIS BOOK! I just know that I will re-read and study this book many times over the course of my life and I also intend to read every other book written by this author (of the ones that have been translated into English that is). Yuasa has a wonderful way of explaining the mind/body relationship that integrates and contrasts eastern and western thought. Such an intelligent and well written book, I highly recommend it!

We're almost finished learning Dadao (halberd) and that is the last form on our list. After that's done there are a few extra forms that are optional to learn but mostly it's qigong and internal stuff, Shifu doesn't teach these to many people so I'm really glad to get the chance to learn it. Our class is in a bit of a weird place now though, what will our training be like from now on? No-one knows of course but we're all thinking about it a lot. There's never been a traditional class here that also does the internal training so there's no precedent. I don't even know if Shifu knows what will happen or not, this school is a pretty fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of place.

I'm really excited, this stuff is a big part of why I gave up so much to come live here for 5 years. If I was only interested in forms or sparring, there were many places I could have gone to that would have been much more convenient. I really liked the combination of physical practice with self-cultivation that Wudang offered though. I love the idea of training every part of myself together instead of separating "me" into little boxes that I open and look at only one at a time.

So far this year I've been spending a lot more of my mental energy on things like attitude and understanding, rather than just endurance. Is it because the training is easier? I don't think so, I think the atmosphere of our class has changed, we're all aware that we're only here for a little over a year longer and we need to get the most out of it that we can. My meditation has also played a part in that, I've gone through a leap in progress that is hard to explain but I'll just say that I've been letting go of some negativity that I'd collected without meaning to and my emotions are becoming more and more stable as my body becomes more and more healthy. Good stuff!

This is just a random picture I was looking at. Mel and I for some reason were asked to take some pictures like these for a local student last summer. It was fun but pretty random. It's fun to dress up sometimes, we get so used to being grungy and wearing kung fu clothes everyday.

I also changed the look of my blog and I am ready to....post a link to my website:

http://brandibeckett.wix.com/brandibeckett

Whew! I actually made this last year but was too nervous to let anyone know about it. Weird, I know but it never seemed finished, it still doesn't actually. Well, it's rather bare bones but let me know what you think.

The longer I live here, the fewer the times that I enjoy being in China rather than at home. Today, hearing about the snow at home after a week of hot, sunny weather here, learning one of my favorite forms ever from Shifu and eating a big bowl of chopped banana, mango, and coconut for dinner is one of those times.

Don't begrudge me this, soon enough it'll be blazing hot and humid and I'll be miserable. Now is fine though, very fine indeed.

Last night some of us finished up a week long meditation retreat/herbal cleanse. We made our own medicine balls with chinese herbs and we ate them three times a day as well as drinking herbal teas and eating mostly fruit with some rice soup and veg some of the days. We meditated three times every day for seven days for anywhere from an hour to 2 1/2 hours. Shifu also taught us a bit, we started off with a lecture and he was very open with us about answering questions and trying to lay down some wisdom for our benefit.

It was very challenging and also very rewarding and although there were several points at which I wondered if I could make it through, I did! I'm proud of myself for persevering, journal-ling every day, and not cheating on the foods (though I didn't really feel hungry). The first half was definitely the most challenging but I got through that and days 5, 6, and 7 were awesome. We've done something similar before but only for 3 days and I think 7 is way better. It gives you a chance to really get into it and start to realize some of the benefits, not just feel a lot of pain.

At the beginning I decided that I would try to cleanse myself of desires as well as physical stuff. I chanted some of the scriptures each day pertaining to cleansing in general and getting rid of desires and during the week I tried to be really conscious of desires that came up and relax, trying to let them go. Funnily enough, Shifu also gave a lecture on the last day about desires that was perfectly in line with what I was trying to accomplish. Talk about synchronicity! Well I feel like I made some real progress and have a better idea of how to proceed too.

Just thought I'd share two of my favorite Shifu quotes from the week:

"If there's something you don't need, just throw it away"

and...

"Sitting is the hardest kung fu"



So true.

I came across something awesome this week, a book called Ninpo: Wisdom for Life by Masaaki Hatsumi. Hatsumi is the Grandmaster of Togakure Ryu ninjustsu and the book is just a series of essays written by him on a bunch of different topics. Some of the essays are a little strange or too technical but there are some real gems in there too. One in particular really stuck in my mind, about enthusiasm for training, he likens training in martial arts to creating pottery, you need some kind of heat to produce things and make changes, so for us enthusiasm or passion can be that heat. There's a lot of stuff in there that applies to any martial art, most of my favorites have the theme of training hard being the best way to progress. The person I borrowed the book from told me something else I really liked that Hatsumi says:

Takamatsu sensei (Hatsumi's teacher) told him that when we train hard, our bodies heat up and we sweat. The heat causes the sweat to evaporate, sending up steam to heaven reminiscent of the smoke from incense when we make an offering in a temple or shrine. Over time, we make many of these "offerings" and are eventually rewarded when heaven sends us the "martial winds".

Isn't that awesome?! I've really been enjoying thinking of training, and consequently sweating, as an offering to heaven since I heard this story. Shifu told us that we get too caught up in the physical side of our training sometimes and this imagery has really helped me to change my perspective over the past week or so.

I had a really nasty stomach flu last week. It's been going around the school. This place is as bad as a daycare sometimes, virus's just rip through here like wildfire. Mel and I were both sick at the same time too actually, which was kinda gross for both of us, nothing makes a flu worse than being around someone else who's vomiting and feverish too. We're on the mend now but although it's been a week, recovery is slow for me this time. I still have these random symptoms that change from day to day, sore throat, chest congestion, runny nose and it's pretty annoying. I'm not really sick anymore yet I'm still feeling bad. I've been pretty diligent about taking vitamins, drinking herbal teas, getting lots of sleep, etc but this thing just stubbornly hangs on. Hopefully this next week will be better.

On a better note, we've started to learn the Taiji 13 form which was supposedly created by Zhang San Feng, the patriarch of our lineage. According to legend, he was inspired by watching a snake fight a bird. I like tai ji so I'm just happy to get to practice it more often.

http://hardcorezen.info/yoga-is-the-new-satanism/1701

This is a link to an awesome article written by Brad Warner, the author of Hardcore Zen and a Zen teacher of some renown. I often read his blog because even though I am not Buddhist and don't practice zen, he says a lot of insightful stuff and he really makes me laugh. This article in particular is very well thought out and it's clear from what he writes about his time as a beginner to meditation that he's really put a lot of time in and understands the not-so-glamorous side.

Check it out!!! Let me know what you think.

Sometimes I really don't know what to say when the day for blogging arrives.

This week was super challenging, we're training with a class of Chinese students again which can be tough for many reasons. This is a different class than before though and they're so sweet and hardworking with none of the teenage attitude that made the other class so annoying. It's pretty alright so far. My legs are super done though, I actually got a muscle cramp in my left quad the other day which hasn't happened in ages. Foam roller here I come!!

I really wonder what Shifu is going to do with us this last year and a half. He never seems to think it's important to let us know the plan which makes me wonder if there even is a plan, or if it's some game to test our commitment, or who knows what. One of the hardest parts of being here is never having any idea what the @#$% is going on! It seems like Chinese people are really not bothered by that at all, they have a completely different concept of time and of self. During time off they always seem like they're just hanging out, waiting for something to happen. For westerners, this is bizarre and completely foreign. I wish I could explain it better, it's just a cultural difference that becomes impossible to ignore after a while.

bleh.....I'm tired.

 We finished learning Eight Immortals Sword this week and it is AMAZING!
















I Love The Sword!!! Yaaaarg!

3 weeks down and I'm already tired. haha.

Due to chinese new year we had an 8 day training week last week and it was pretty exhausting. Even after the day off yesterday, my body is super fatigued, especially the legs. I know kung fu is generally a leg workout but it's times like these that you really get to experience what that feels like. This is why I'll never have skinny thighs.

We're learning a cool form now. Eight Immortals sword. It's very long and tricky but so much fun!

I finished my first week of training and then we got 4 days off for Chinese New year. It was nice. I kind of wish I could have saved those days for the middle of summer when I really need then though. I just had over a month off so I would have been content to just train as usual. Oh well, I don't want to complain about having time off!

It's been a pretty smooth transition this year so far. Shifu hasn't been around so we are left to our own devices a little which is so nice. Mel had the brilliant idea to bring back a foam roller for self-massage and it's already been totally worth it. I've been rolling my quadriceps and although it's pretty uncomfortable, it's kept me from getting too sore. There's just one area that I can't massage with the roller, neck/shoulder area. That's what friends are for though right! haha.

I really gained some perspective over the break and I feel so much more confident about my future return to Canada now. I know what I want to do and though there are still lots of details to figure out, it's going to be such a time of personal growth. I look forward to it. I still have another year and a half here that I need to focus on but it feels easier to do that when I'm feeling so positive about the future.

After 6 weeks of resting I've returned to Wudang and to training. The time at home was amazing, I ate a ton, rested and slept, and spent time with the people I love. It's been great. Though it was hard to leave I've made it back and I'm relieved to be here. It feels good to move again.

The return trip was ok. We're both pretty jet-lagged though which usually only happens when traveling east so I'm surprised. We always seem to end up sitting near babies on the plane, that might have something to do with it.

With Chinese New Year coming up and most of the Chinese students gone, we're getting lots of time to practice and review on our own so I'm already really enjoying that. It's nice when you're self-directed too because you can ease back into training a little more gradually and take it easy for a few days.